


Shattered Surface, So Imperfect

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22487515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: Does the mouth at the Mountain of Ghosts go all the way down to the Underworld? Quentin Coldwater knows.
Relationships: Qualice - Relationship, Qualiot - Relationship, Queliot - Relationship, Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	Shattered Surface, So Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> Post 5x03. If you want to know what the letter says in full, check out Letters I Never Sent ;) And there miiiight be a follow-up fic in the works. Just sayin'.

It was almost funny, in that same sort of unfortunate series of events way that so much of his life had been, that even in death Quentin seemed to have misstepped. Or at least, that's what it felt like. That's what it had to be, right? Because he remembered being in that stark, harshly sterile room. He remembered that doorway appearing, and he remembered making the decision to walk through it. _Finally_ , he thought, feeling like he'd done something right. That unequivocal kind of right - the impossible settled feeling he'd spent his entire life searching for. That's what he felt when he walked through that door. He was _that sure_. 

So why was he sitting here, wringing his hands over one another, sinking his fingers with frustrated uncertainty into his hair? Why wasn't he - somewhere else? Beyond? Resting? God, he had been so tired. For so long. Didn't he deserve to rest? But he wasn't resting. He was shivering and stuttering and searching for another door to walk through and coming up short. He was - incomplete. Decidedly unsettled. Something, something, _something was missing._ But it was a deep sort of something, not obvious enough for him to name, but nagging enough that he could feel the empty space of it somewhere unpinnable inside of him. 

He searched for it, mulling through the souls in the same in-between space as him. They bumped into one another, reaching out but not feeling anything. They were all searching, searching, ceaselessly searching. Wasn't his searching supposed to be done? Hadn't he spent his entire goddamn life looking for peace? Death was supposed to be different. But it wasn't. He couldn't find it. Which made sense. He didn't even know what _it_ was. 

It felt like another lifetime that he searched, hoping that he'd know _it_ as soon as he found _it._ As it turned out, time in the Underworld was fucked in a way that made Fillory's time slips look like child's play. Bone-tired (which was impressive considering he was _pretty_ sure he didn't technically have bones anymore), he wandered to the edge of the grassy knoll of unsettled souls. It was quieter on the perimeter, and he needed a little quiet, even peaceless as it were. Everyone seemed convinced that what they were looking for was somewhere in the middle of the grove, somewhere caught in the branches of the small forest of gnarled trees. He hoped it was, for them. Quentin had climbed every one of those goddamn trees and come up empty. He moved further away from the quicksand of a thousand restless souls, feeling a little more himself as he did. An errant root poking up from the dirt caught his foot as he trudged tiredly. He tripped, stumbling forward, catching himself just before he face-planted on the damp, misted ground. _Jesus._ Couldn't his incorporeal form at least be a little more graceful than he'd been in life? Righting himself, he found a fallen tree and hoisted himself onto it, turning to face the curtain of fog that surrounded the knoll. The weather reminded him of a fall afternoon in Brooklyn. It wasn't really cold or warm. It hardly felt like a temperature at all. The mist wasn't thick enough to be rain, the fog didn't roll through. It just stayed, like an immovable curtain preventing them all from moving on. How fitting. 

Quentin had never believed in a higher power. Sure, he'd met gods. Hell, he'd partied with Bacchus and killed Ember. But he didn't believe in the kind of higher power that answered your prayers or solve your problems. He'd seen too much to believe gods were anything but selfish, self-serving creatures who craved power far more than they cared about the humans they were supposed to protect. So he didn't pray for an answer. He didn't beg to move on. What was the point? 

In the stillness, suddenly, he heard a _clink-clink-crshhh-fomp_ and saw, a few feet into the fog, something glowing a vague, opaque gold. He stood and walked, the fog parting around him as he did, making a Quentin-shaped divot in the seemingly impenetrable mist. He knelt down and wrapped his hands around the bottle. It was a Brakebills bottle, from Fogg's private stores, if he remembered right. 

_Alice._

Laughter and tears played a game of tug-of-war that neither won on the way out of his throat, a messy mix of the two stumbling into the quiet, thick air around him. This was _it._ The missing piece. He could feel the space where it was missing inside of him calling out to it. There was no question about where it came from, who had taken it in the first place. Of course it was Alice. Of course she wouldn't just _let him go._ His sweet, brilliant, wild, brave Alice. His Vix. He cradled the bottle close to his chest and sat down in the fog. He was one cork pull away from peace now. 

"Thank you, Vix," he said, reaching for the cork. He looked up, readying a cheers to wherever she was, when a thick, cream colored envelope hit him in the side of the head, falling into his lap. 

Quentin's eyebrows knitted together as he flipped it over. His heart stopped - or, it felt like his heart stopped, he couldn't be sure, did he have a heart anymore? - when he saw the handwriting. 

_Eliot._

He would have recognized that penmanship anywhere. He'd watched those lithe hands write volumes over a lifetime. Letters to their friends he tried to send at first, and then kept writing them for the sake of something to do, some way to keep them connected, until arthritis took over and he couldn't anymore. He'd watched that handwriting scrawl on chalk-smudge paper, documenting their countless attempts at solving that damn mosaic. 

Carefully, Quentin set the bottle in his lap and placed a thumb under the flap of the envelope, detaching the adhesive. He pulled the folded parchment out like it was something precious and fragile. It was, really. Quentin didn't have to know what it said to know that. He knew Eliot better than he knew himself. Just like he knew Alice better than he knew himself. 

_Before He Went to the Seam,_ it said. That was all Quentin needed to see to know that it was full of delicate things he didn't want to break. His eyes drank in every vulnerable word on the paper, his heart breaking for what they didn't get another chance to have. 

_.....And I'll be damned if you go to the grave not knowing that._

Laughter and tears flowed in earnest as he folded the parchment back up. He knew he probably couldn't take it with him, but _he'd_ be damned if he wasn't going to try. He clutched the letter to his heart with one hand and the bottle with the other. He laughed until he was breathless and his stomach hurt. He cried until his throat was raw and his eyes stung like he'd been swimming in the ocean with his eyes wide open. 

Because of course. Of course they both found a way to save him after he was beyond saving. Of course they both found a way to reach him when he was unreachable. Of course, of course, of course. Eliot Waugh and Alice Quinn couldn't let Quentin Coldwater rest without one last reminder of how deeply he'd been loved. 

He ached, because he never got to hear those words in Eliot's quiet, quavering voice - the one he only used when he was telling a truth he was terrified of, but he could hear them as if he had. He shattered, because if Alice hadn't been so unprepared to let him go, if she hadn't been so adamant about fighting for any thread to bring him back, he might never have seen them at all. He smiled, because he felt right, again. That unequivocal rightness, because the two loves of his life - his lives - had hand-delivered the keys to his rest. Because they had done it, somehow, together. Because he knew there was no other way for him to find peace. It had to be them - both of them - like this. 

"Thank you, El," he said, looking up again. "I love you both, _so_ much." 

Tears welled in his eyes. He pulled the cork on the bottle. The opaque gold glow shot out and into his chest, settling somewhere inside of him he couldn't place, or feel, or see, but he didn't have to. It was right. He was right. 

A door appeared another few feet into the fog, with an ornate, polished, wrought-iron "Q" on the old, battered wood. He didn't hesitate. 

_Finally._


End file.
